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Something for Thursday

UPDATE: What happens when you try throwing together a post about anything you can possibly think of late at night on a day when you’ve been up since five in the morning? Errors, that’s what. So, below wherever you read “Bakshi”, substitute “Rankin Bass”, if you please. I don’t know where my head was on that, but….

Sorry, folks, but today was a solid kick-in-the-arse kind of day. A very early start at work for a big project, resulting in a brain of mush in the evening.

Anyway, way back before Peter Jackson took the reins of filming Middle Earth, the Ralph Bakshi animation studios took a shot at the work of JRR Tolkien. The animated Lord of the Rings is legendarily bad, as is the later follow-up for teevee, Return of the King. But their film of The Hobbit is not without its charms. The animation wasn’t the best, but the actual art was quite good, and the Bakshi Middle Earth had a look all its own. It took me a little while, actually, when watching Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring the first ever time to get my head past the fact that his hobbits didn’t look like this:

The film did a fairly nice job with the songs. It all has a 1970s folk sound to it, but they are still quite charming. Here’s the title song, “The Greatest Adventure”:

And this, Glenn Yarborough’s setting of the “old walking song” that is heard throughout all of The Hobbit and LOTR:

In a scene where a bunch of goblins are attacking Bilbo and the dwarves, the goblins sing this nasty ditty (words by JRRT):

And one of my favorite selections, the song sung by the Dwarves to Bilbo at the beginning, when they are explaining their mission to go back to Lonely Mountain and take back what is theirs:

Great stuff!

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Random Notes from Home

Daily life stuff….

:: I made pizza for dinner last night. Nothing fancy, just cheese, pepperoni, and sausage, but I made my crust and my sauce from scratch, so that’s something. It turned out really well, I thought. There’s something really satisfying about DIY pizza. Now to experiment with other crust recipes; the one I used is a basic crust from Cooking Light magazine.

:: I watched the last half hour or so of the 24 finale. Hmmmm. Spoiler thoughts (highlight to read):

Jack doesn’t even get to go to bed after his day? Now he’s on the run from both the US and the Russians? And at some point in the past he pissed off China, so where can he go? Canada?

And if the President is feeling that bad about Jack and what he’s been through, why doesn’t she pardon him before resigning her office?

And yes, I’ll totally see a 24 movie.

:: SamuraiFrog on the finale of LOST:

There are two kinds of people–those who loved the last episode of Lost, and those with no poetry in their souls.

I watched the finale (switching back and forth between it and the Celebrity Apprentice finale, which was so much filler that you could watch about eight minutes of the whole thing and catch it all), and I like to think that my soul’s got poetry a-plenty within it, and my reaction to the show was pretty much what my reaction to LOST has always been: Yeah, it’s a pretty show and it’s extremely well-made and Michael Giacchino can write some good music, but…that’s about it. Maybe I’m simply not attuned to the poetry in LOST, wherever it is, but the finale struck me as lots and lots of sentimental stuff, right down to the tearful reunion of man and dog, combined with lots of glowy stuff about death and Heaven. As a non-fan of the show I wasn’t looking for “the answers”, but the online commentary I’ve seen is pretty unanimous that the finale didn’t offer any.

So, basically, what seemed to wind up happening is LOST boiling down to “Our Town meets The Five People You Meet In Heaven meets The X-Files“. Whether they were dead the whole time or whether they were only dead in the parallel timeline doesn’t really matter, apparently, and the creators basically gave themselves the ultimate “out” in terms of explaining stuff: they can simply say, “Explanations, schmexplanations. It’s all religious allegory about death and the afterlife. We don’t need logic for that.” From the vantage point of someone outside the whole LOST phenomenon, it seems to me that what the producers did here was this close to being, if not actually being, an enormous deus ex machina ending. And not just the ending: the entirety of LOST is deus ex machina.

I’m wondering how this show and its ending are going to age, as the emotions of the journey fade and other memories come to the fore. It’ll be interesting.

:: In other teevee season finale news: CSI: Miami‘s finale was unbelievably silly; haven’t seen Grey’s Anatomy or Castle yet (in fact, we’re still eight or nine episodes behind on Castle, so we’ll have new teevee here at Casa Jaquandor for a while); I’m growing more and more weary of The Office and think the show should just end when Michael Scott leaves; The Mentalist needs to wrap up the not-that-interesting Red John storyline soon; and…that’s about it, I guess.

:: It’s really hot this week here in Buffalo. Mid-80s. The kind of weather that makes me irritable and cranky because it’s too unpleasant to go outside and do much of anything. I hate hot weather. This is July weather, and it’s the big reason why July (excepting the Fourth, which I adore) is my least favorite month. July weather in May? I really hope this is an aberration and not a harbinger of a July for the ages in these parts….

:: I’m closing in on finishing Super Mario Bros. on the Wii. I’m past the first “Boss” level in World Seven, so I have a couple of levels and then all of World Eight to go. Yay me! I had “reached” World Eight before, but that was with me doing a lot of playing doubles with The Kid, who has beaten the game multiple times now; basically she completed levels while I died a lot. Now I have a game that I’m playing myself. Fun stuff! (We need some more Wii games, though…maybe Mario Galaxy, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and one of those Lego games, like Indiana Jones.

:: The Daughter is now reading all of the Harry Potter books. She’s on Order of the Phoenix, although she keeps asking me what happens in Deathly Hallows. I refuse to tell her. We’ve watched the existing movies, so she’s still operating on certain assumptions as regarding Professor Snape. Heh! I, of course, refuse to confirm or deny.

That’s about it. More posting later, I hope!

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Quizzery

I saw this quiz split into two parts over at Sunday Stealing, so here it is stitched back together with baling wire.

1. What’s your favorite Dr. Seuss book?

Fox in Socks, I guess.

2. If you could live in any home on a television series, what would it be?

Serenity, on Firefly. (Yes, the ship is a home.)

3. What’s the longest you’ve gone without sleep?

Probably eighteen to twenty hours, tops. I never pulled an actual all-nighter in college, unless staying up until nearly 6:00 am counts. The Wife (then The Girlfriend) and I drove all night to move her stuff from Iowa to WNY back in 1994, but we took shifts sleeping.

4. What’s your favorite Barry Manilow song?

“I Write the Songs”. Seconded by “Copacabana”. It scares me to think that I actually have a favorite Barry Manilow song.

5. Who’s your favorite Muppet?

Animal. Or the stoner from “Mahna mahna”. Love those guys!

6. What’s the habit you’re proudest of breaking?

Hmmmmm…maybe my habit of not trying to write at least a line or two every day? Not that it’s helping out much, but still….

7. What’s your favorite website?

This one, duh!

8. What’s your favorite school supply?

Pens. Nice pens. Fountain pens, actually. I have about fifteen cool fountain pens. I don’t use ’em enough, but fountain pens are all kinds of cool.

9. Who’s your favorite TV attorney?

The guy who defends James T. Kirk in the original Star Trek episode “Court Martial”. It’s a really cool episode, even if the ending is a bit contrived.

10. What was your most recent trip of more than 50 miles?

Going to Pittsburgh on Easter weekend.

11. What’s the best bargain you’ve ever found at a garage sale or junk shop?

Hmmmmm. “Bargain” in this sense seems to me to indicate something you really wanted and got cheaply, as opposed to price versus actual value. When garage-saleing a few years ago, I picked up a lovely serving plate and matching serving bowl that have a lovely pattern: black rim with a single pink blossom on one side. It looks quite Asian to my eye.

The Library Book Sales always thrill, too; I document these each time I go (they’re quarterly — in fact, the next is coming up in a couple of weeks). There was one where it turned out someone had unloaded a large cache of old science fiction stuff. That one resulted in a full box!

12. Where were you on September 11, 2001?

I was on my way to work when the planes hit. When I got in my car, the first had already struck and no one was sure if this was an attack or something horrible gone awry on a plane. In fact, I first heard “a plane crashed into the WTC” and I thought that some idiot in a Cessna had screwed up. I was in the drive-through at Tim Horton’s, picking up a bagel, when the second plane hit. My immediate thought was one of utter confusion: “How does this happen twice? Was this…oh my God, this was intentional.”

When I got to work, the radio was already on and everyone was shocked. A while later the third plane hit the Pentagon. The next few hours were as surreal a day as I’ve ever spent in a job. There were radio reports of several more missing planes; then one plane; then a plane that the USAF had shot down. At one point a report came through of a car bomb detonating outside the State Department in Washington, DC. And in the midst of all that, the most horrific announcement of all: the first of the two towers of the WTC had collapsed.

The vagaries of that job — telesales, calling pharmacies to sell generic liquid medications — never seemed more unimportant than on that day. Which was sad, because I remember having a really good sales day that day. I found it awfully hard to give a crap, though.

At some point on that day, I scrawled out “9-11-01 Remember” on a post-it note and stuck it to my computer. I still have that post-it note in my stuff, somewhere ’round here, along with the copy of the Buffalo News I bought the next day. I made sure to keep that post-it when I cleaned out my desk on firing day.

13. What’s your favorite tree?

When we moved into our house in 1981, which is the house my parents still live in, the house sat on a very large parcel of land that had no trees on it. None. There was a tree line/hedge row on one side of the land, and on the other, but there were no trees whatsoever anywhere near the house. My parents spent a lot of effort (and, I expect, money) over the next couple of years buying trees and planting them. There is now an enormous weeping willow in the front yard, some impressively tall pines, and one pine that I asked for when we stopped at a garden center just a few months in. We planted that tree outside my bedroom window, where it grows still. That tree is now so big that it actually had to be cut back so my parents could use their front door to, you know, get in and out of the house! That tree is awesome, man.

There’s also a wonderful tree down the road from their house that isn’t particularly unique in itself, but it’s by itself in someone’s yard and every fall its leaves turn a spectacular red that makes it look from afar like the entire tree is aflame.

14. What’s the most interesting biography you’ve read?

I should read more biographies…but Jacques Barzun’s bio of Hector Berlioz is an amazing read.

15. What do you order when you eat Chinese food?

As much as I adore Chinese food and love many dishes…I tend to default to General Tso’s. Or I’ll get Sesame chicken, which is just General Tso’s without the chili peppers and with sesame seeds tossed on. Once in a while, Kung Pao. But hey! Last time out, I got pepper steak!

I should get Mu Shu Pork one of these days. It just tends to be very messy, though.

16. What’s the best costume you’ve ever worn?

My mother made me a Captain Marvel suit when I was in kindergarten and was enthralled with All Things SHAZAM!.

More creatively, in college, there was a party one night in the music department which was themed “Dress as your favorite musician”. So I, having been told that I looked like our school’s oboe teacher, threw on what he usually wore — a tie-less shirt, blazer, and five-o’clock shadow — and went as him. Got rave reviews. I wonder if anyone ever told him about that?

17. What’s your least favorite word?

For some weird reason, about ten years ago, all of a sudden everybody was using the word “copacetic”. And hey, if someone tells me my work is copacetic, great and thanks and all, but the word itself just sounds like an unpleasant medical condition.

“Will he live, Doctor?”

“I don’t know, Agnes. He’s gone…copacetic.”

18. If you had to be named after one of the 50 states, which would it be?

I’d want to be Even Newer York.

For some reason, I’ve always remembered this: an episode of The Dukes of Hazzard where the villain was a femme fatale of sorts named Alabama. And the show’s narrator sagely informed us: “You should never trust a woman named after a state.” I think of that every time I meet some poor kid named Dakota.

19. Who’s your favorite bear?

The grizzly that stalks Tristan Ludlow (Brad Pitt) throughout the 70+ years of his life in Legends of the Fall. That’s some bear.

20. Describe something that’s happened to you for which you have no explanation.

You’re reading this blog! Don’t you have anything better to do?

21. If you could travel anywhere in Africa, where would it be?

I’d love to see the Pyramids in Egypt. And I’d love to see how many hours it would take me to work up the guts to jump into Devil’s Pool.

22. What did you have for lunch yesterday?

Leftover tacos from a couple of nights before.

23. Where do you go for advice?

Depends. Sometimes I post a question on Facebook or here. Or I ask someone in person, usually at work, whom I know to be knowledgeable in the area I’m looking for. Or I type a question into Google. Or I just plow on ahead and try to come up with my own answer.

24. Which do you use more often, the dictionary or the thesaurus?

Dictionary, mainly for spelling. I don’t use the thesaurus all that often, but when I need it, it’s invaluable.

25. Have you ever been snorkeling? Scuba diving?

Snorkeling, but only in a synthetic reef thing at Disney World. I had a good time, but The Wife did not. She kicked with her feet and struck a piece of fake coral, ripping the toenail out of her big toe. This was Day Two of our vacation. I spent the rest of it pushing her around in a wheelchair at the Disney parks. But at least we didn’t have to wait in line for rides.

26. Have you ever been stung by a bee?

Sure. Hasn’t everybody?

27. What’s the sickest you’ve ever been?

Had the flu in late 1996. That’s the only time I have ever called off work because I was sick. It came and went fairly quickly, but man, was that ever unpleasant.

28. What’s your favorite form of exercise?

Walking/hiking, and bicycling.

29. What’s your favorite Cyndi Lauper song?

“Time After Time”.

30. What did you do for your 13th birthday?

I have no idea whatsoever.

31. Are you afraid of heights?

Not especially, although in some contexts I’d probably be freaked out. I’d love to go in Toronto’s CN Tower and stand on the glass floor. I’m not sure I’d ever voluntarily jump out of a perfectly good airplane that wasn’t in the process of spiraling downward toward its doom.

32. Have you ever taken dance lessons?

No. I wouldn’t mind. Dancing looks fun.

33. What’s your favorite newspaper?

By default, since it’s the only one I read with any regularity, the Buffalo News.

34. What’s your favorite Broadway / West End musical?

Without ever having seen it, Les Miserables.

35. What’s the most memorable class you’ve ever taken?

Oh, wow. I’ve taken a lot of great classes. Oriental Thought. Philosophy of Religion. Epistemology. Foundations of Science. Shakespeare. Poli Sci 101.

36. What’s your favorite knock-knock joke?

OK, I don’t really know any offhand, so I’m going to Google some and pick the one I like best. Hang out here a moment….

[insert filler music]

All right, here it is:

Knock knock
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Orange.
Orange who?
Orange you glad I didn’t say banana ?

I suppose it’s true, then: “Knock Knock” jokes, without exception, suck.

37. What’s your least favorite commercial?

Those of you who don’t live in the Buffalo Niagara region won’t have been tormented with these ads. I won’t soil my beautiful, beautiful blog by embedding the video, so, if you must — and I can’t urge you strongly enough not to — well, watch. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

38. If you could go to Disney World with any celebrity alive today, who would it be?

Sarah Palin. So I could chain her to one of the “It’s A Small World” boats and make her ride it for the rest of her life.

39. Do you prefer baths or showers?

Showers. Hot tubs are nifty, though.

40. What’s your favourite newspaper comic strip?

Get Fuzzy. I read that and Pearls Before Swine daily. (OK, I also read Funky Winkerbean, but I read that one more for the slow-motion-car-wreck thing it has going on these days.)

41. What’s your favorite breakfast food?

Waffles! Or pancakes. French toast is acceptable. And sometimes you just want a nice omelet. But mainly, waffles.

42. Who’s your favarite game show host?

Phil Keoghan of The Amazing Race. I also never really appreciated Survivor‘s Jeff Probst until just this recently concluded season; he’s always seemed OK and workmanlike, but he really is quite perceptive about stuff, and in the live finale, he did a really good job with the interviews, forcing answers to questions and deflecting some of Russell’s nonsensical replies.

Of game show hosts of the more traditional sort, I always enjoyed Bob Barker.

43. If you could have a super power, what would it be?

Flight. But Superman-style flight, not something like Angel of the X-Men. No big-ass wings for me!

44. Do you like guacamole?

It’s OK. I’m not a huge fan, but I don’t dislike it, either.

45. Have you ever been in a food fight?

Nope, unless being an occasional target for edible missiles counts.

46. Name five songs to which you know all the lyrics.

“Every Which Way But Loose” (Eddie Rabbitt); “Love’s Been Good to Me” (Rod McKuen); “Hey Jude” (some poof from Liverpool);

47. What’s your favorite infomercial?

I never, ever, ever watch informercials. Ever. I really don’t like them at all.

48. What’s the longest you’ve ever waited in line?

Hmmmm…I don’t remember, really. Probably some line for a popular ride at an amusement park. Those can be ridiculously long.

49. What’s on the cover of your address book or day planner?

Nothing. It’s a small checkbook-sized thing in a checkbook-like cover. I got it for two bucks somewhere, intending to actually use it for once.

And yet, I don’t.

50. Have you ever taken a picture in one of those little booths?

Nope. Sounds fun, though!

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Sentential Links #207

Linkage!

:: As a kid, I had no clue whatsoever what the song was about–I only thought the whole “Skyrockets in flight” thing was cool, being nuts for fireworks, never stopping to consider the impossibility of enjoying the visual spectacle during a sunlit afternoon. Now, 35 years older and wiser, I totally get it that the whole “skyrockets” thing is one o’ them there metaphors. Deep thinkers, those Starland Vocal Banders. (Yup! Loved the song as a kid, because I had zero idea what an ‘afternoon delight’ was. Just a neat song. Then I went about twenty years without hearing it, until it turned up on a 1970s compilation CD that I bought in 1995 or so for some other song. I played “Afternoon Delight” and got one or two verses in before I realized, “Hey! This song is about Teh Sex!”)

:: It’s simple really. A plane crashed and a group of strangers who really know each other but don’t is stranded on this mysterious island inhabited by polar bears, a smoke monster, residential tract homes, a hatch, a group called “the Others”, giant foot statue, clipper ship and a plane in trees, temple, force fields, a lighthouse, golden pond, a hydrogen bomb, and this great little cove for fishing. (I’ve been kind of vexed by LOST — I’ve had the feeling that I should like it, but when I’ve tried it, my reaction has invariably been “Meh”. I watched the first five or six episodes of the first season, and then I bailed out when I decided that I just wasn’t interested enough to keep watching. I tried again several times over the next few years, when they’d have recaps followed by season premieres, but it never took. I don’t know. I hope the fans had fun with their finale, though.)

:: What is most surprising about the film is that it is anything but the convention breaker many made it out to be, solely because of the homosexual slant. In essence it’s a very conventional romance, whose narrative, through gripping, offers few surprises.

:: Pac-Man, on the other hand, was simply a ubiquitous part of the background noise of my early adolescence. A very pleasant noise, to be sure… the opening theme song and the pathetic little “zoink-zoink” sound when ol’ Packy gets eaten can still bring a smile to my face. But I can’t remember the first time I saw or played the game; it seems like all of a sudden, it was just all over the place, appearing fully grown overnight like dandelions on the front lawn. And it still is all over, if you’re paying attention. Arcades have gone away and cabinet-style coin-op games are pretty rare in general, but if you encounter a vintage game out there somewhere, odds are good that it’s going to be a Pac-Man… or at least one of those combo units that have several classic games in one cabinet, and Pac-Man is always an option in those. The longevity of the cute little yellow mouth and the pop-eyed ghosts who are his mortal enemies is nothing less than astounding. (Wow, do I ever remember the Pac-man craze…but really, Ms. Pac-man was such a superior game, with its different mazes and whatnot. I miss arcades, to be honest….)

:: It is a day we will never forget as long as we live…. Richard and I were living in Portland, Oregon on this day and would stay another 4 years…but this day was one that would rattle us both with excitement, fear and awe forever! (Wow…someone else who lived in Portland at the time of the eruption. What an amazing day May 18 was.)

:: Oh, Funky Winkerbean, I’m glad you’ve finally decided to give in and just embrace emotional devastation as the engine for all your drama.

:: Howabout we have everyone remind each other about how he saved the world over and over and over again! The more they talk about how great he is, the more it reminds us that we haven’t seen any actual evidence of that supposed greatness, and the more hollow and useless he seems. Until at the end, we get a funeral scene filled with characters telling us how much he changed their lives forever with his brilliance and awesomeness…only to never ever ever mention him again the second the dirt is heaped on his grave. (Wow. One question, though — who is ‘The Sentry’?)

More next week!

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Striking Back

So, thirty years have passed since the release of Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Wow, I guess. As luck would have it, I watched the film not too long ago — a couple of months, probably — and it still holds up extremely well. This is unsurprising, of course; the film is a bona fide classic.

I’ve read some tributes here and there around the Interweb and around Blogistan specifically, and I’ve found myself of mixed mind about the good words being said about the movie, mainly because a very large portion of comment seems to be of the “Wow, remember thirty years ago when Star Wars didn’t suck?” variety. I’m saddened by that, but hey, nothing I can do about it, either. It gets tiring, though — it seems that every event or happening or milestone that returns Star Wars to public consciousness is followed by the usual “George Lucas is the richest hack in history” comment. Oh well. Par for the course. Put it this way: I’m not much looking forward to 2013’s 30th anniversary of Return of the Jedi.

Empire came out when I was just eight years old, living in Hillsboro, OR. I didn’t see it for a few weeks after it came out, and yet, in those pre-Interweb days, I was able to go see the sequel to Star Wars three or four weeks after its release with zero idea of its story, other than what I’d seen in the TV commercials and such. I knew there was a snowy planet where the Rebels were fighting these big metal dinosaurs, I knew that there was a space chase through some asteroids, and I knew that there was a new character played by some guy named Billy Dee. That’s about it. I certainly had no idea that there was a Jedi master named Yoda, and I was actually surprised when the goofy little green guy in the swamp turned out to be Yoda. I was horribly dismayed when Han Solo got put into carbon freeze, but I thought, “Hey, no prob, they’ll save him before the movie ends.” Yeah…my first ever experience with a cliffhanger.

And I had no idea whatsoever that Darth Vader might be Luke Skywalker’s father.

How was this possible? Well, again, it was pre-Interweb, and pre-cable teevee, and all the rest of that. Also, I was lucky that my school district at the time let out for summer vacation in the first days of June, so Empire had been out for all of two weeks before I lost most contact with my schoolmates, most of whom hadn’t yet seen the movie either. So there was nobody to spoil the thing for me. I went into that movie almost completely blind. Empire was the last Star Wars film I was able to do that with.

Empire is, of course, now nearly universally hailed as the best of all Star Wars movies. There’s a lot to that, to be honest; the film earns its reputation with a superb script, amazingly paced and shot action sequences, a darker turn of events, and what may well be the best music John Williams has ever written. When pressed, I will almost always name A New Hope as my personal favorite Star Wars film, but the pro-Empire arguments are compelling.

Empire‘s beloved status really only started to grow after Return of the Jedi came out three years later. I don’t think it’s so much because Jedi was a bad film, as much as Empire‘s nature — being the middle act of a three-act story — meant that it could only really be appreciated once all the acts were out there, and the middle act’s true function and relation to the rest of the story could be judged. If I preferred Empire when I was a kid, it was mainly because it was shinier and newer than the older, more familiar film.

Here, in tribute, are my two favorite tracks from the entire brilliant score to The Empire Strikes Back. Empire was the first record album I ever bought with my own money. I didn’t even have my own record player at the time, and I had to listen to it in my parents’ bedroom when I wanted to hear it. I’d later get a record player that Christmas (it also had an 8-track tape player!), and Empire was the first thing I played on it. I played that album (a 2-LP set) to death over the next few years, wearing out the gatefold record jacket and putting numerous pops and scratches into the LP’s grooves themselves. Back then, John Williams would arrange his albums to make a “better listening experience”, which meant that tracks were not arranged on the album in the order they were heard in the film and that tracks from entirely different parts of the film were sometimes combined into a single track on the album. I played that album so much that even now, when I listen to subsequent remasterings of the Empire score, with all the tracks in film order, my brain still expects the original album order, with its tracks bearing titles like “The Heroics of Luke and Han”.

The first track is my favorite action cue from the score. Many fans would cite “The Asteroid Field” as theirs, but for me, it’s “The Clash of Lightsabers” all the way. This track underscores the second part of Luke’s duel with Vader, after they’ve moved from the carbon freezing chamber to a mechanical anteroom where Vader starts using the Force to hurl machine parts at Luke. It begins mysteriously and becomes more and more ominous as Vader toys with Luke; the music howls when the big window behind Luke is shattered and the wind begins to pour through the room, sweeping Luke out into the shaft, where he manages to catch onto the gantry and pull himself to safety. Then we cut (at the 1:38 mark) to Leia, Chewie, Lando and the droids as they work their way back to the Millennium Falcon. Lando’s theme (at the 2:00 mark) plays as he announces the evacuation of Cloud City. The rest of the track builds and builds (love the great brass bit starting at 2:36) which ends in first triumph as R2-D2 opens the door to the landing platform, and then the desperate version of the film’s Love Theme as the heroes race for their ship and freedom. This is one of my favorite action cues in all film music.

Second is from earlier in the film, on Dagobah: “Yoda and the Force”. This scene is, for me, the philosophical and emotional heart of just about all of Star Wars, when Yoda takes advantage of the sinking of Luke’s X-wing into the swamp to try to get through to Luke as to what it truly means to feel the Force. It’s a wonderful cue, from the meditative string writing to the noble statement of Yoda’s Theme as he lifts the ship from the water.

Happy birthday, Empire. You’ve never looked better.

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Actually, we’re Quantum Presbyterians

Via Cal, I see that the organizers of the 2012 Summer Olypmics in London have unveiled their mascots for the Games.

And here they are.

Well, aren’t those interesting?

I think that it’s now official, folks. We are now living in the Age of Simpson, because we’ve now come to a point where the Olympic mascots are Kang and Kodos!

Homer: (lowering his trousers and bending over) I suppose you’ll want to probe me. Well, you might as well get it over with.

Kang: Stop! We have reached the limits of what rectal probing can teach us.

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Something for Thursday

Whoa! It’s Thursday. Oops.

As a tonic for the latest crime against music perpetrated on American Idol by the inexplicably beloved crappy singer Lee DeWyze, here’s Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” the way the thing is supposed to sound:

Lee turned it into an arena-rock anthem. It was the most vile thing I’ve heard since…Lee ruined “Falling Slowly” by Glen Hansard and Markita Irglova…or since Lee brutally strangled “Hey Jude” and then dragged the bloody corpse around the stage….

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The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer

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